Many Buddhists reveal their greatest secrets, their prayers and wishes to the Buddha spiritually, but it is now possible to do so in a more “direct” way. with an artificial intelligence (AI) inspired by the spiritual teacher.
In Japan, a team of scholars specializing in religion and computer science at Kyoto University developed an AI program called Buddha Bot, a tool that provides spiritual advice from ancient scriptures to users.
According to the report published on the website of Format 7, Buddha Bot was programmed to memorize about a thousand teachings from Buddhist textsalthough it is still in the testing phase.
“What does happiness mean? This is a question that can soon be asked of the Buddha Bot”, adds the report.
How does this artificial intelligence work?
Through Buddha Bot, users will see on their cell phones an image of Buddha sitting in the lotus position in augmented reality format, answering questions from Internet users.
The report adds an example of a reporter who asked artificial intelligence what happiness means. The answer was the following: “Sharpen your observations and explore the various reasons behind the fatality. Only then can you experience happiness”.
Seiji Kumagai, one of the app’s developers, explained that the AI Buddha is also meant to be a therapeutic distraction in “an increasingly stressful real world.”
“The scriptures of Buddhism represent the wisdom of ancient times. Our goal is for people to apply this ancient wisdom to their lives in this modern society and to seek ways to be happier.”, added the professor of Buddhist and Tibetan studies.
According to Kumagai, this tool could be the previous stage of a virtual spiritual world. The team is focused on improving the AI grammar and some context errors.